23 Things I Learned in 2024.
Reflection is one of the best tools that taught me to stay still, think and write.
Here are Some Things I Learned in 2024:
1. Be involved in doing hard stuff, grand stuff, for an extended period of time. Do a hard thing every day. Do the hard things first thing in the morning. I feel good every day I do that.
2. Be known for doing hard things. Write about them and chase invalidation (Popper’s fallibilism).
3. Focus on one thing at a time, then go full throttle on that one thing. Do this daily for at least 4 hours.
4. I should always mark my own path. Don’t rely on anyone. Be self-sufficient all the time.
5. Am I less or more libre? I should always be more free with time, a libre. I should always own my own destiny.
6. Apprenticeship: Always put myself in places where I can learn from a group of people way better than myself. Be where the Pros are.
7. Be stubborn as much as I like, but self-critique and self-reflect. I should always look for truth (with Popperian fallibilism and Talebian P (Probability) vs. E (Payoff) understanding. More on this in another post).
8. Be strongly founded, with strong views backed by strong diligent work that are weakly held. I can be proven wrong. Most people have weakly founded, wrong views that are strongly held. Debunk anyone doing this. Demand that from others, especially in business.
9. Observe myself from a third-person POV, reflect, and say sorry when I should. “Don’t fool yourself, and you’re the easiest man to fool.”
10. I’m the master of my mind. Do what I think is right. I planned to run a marathon in 2024 when I was running 0 KM in January with a problematic knee. I knew I couldn’t and shouldn’t do it. Doctors told me not to run. I ran 17 km in November. I could never have imagined doing this in January with the knee I had.
11. Don’t waste my time on tatters and the small stuff. Avoid the negatives, and the positives grow by themselves (via-negativa). If I ditch social media and my phone, I naturally read more, have deeper and longer conversations with people, and enjoy dinner with family, etc.
12. Produce > Consume. Keep this in mind all the time. Excessive reading without reflection and action causes atrophy in the brain. Think, retrospect, future-gaze, dream big, and then act. Don’t do one side without the other.
13. Don’t try to milk every inch of everything. Some things should and must NOT be efficient (e.g., time with family, holidays, etc.).
14. Mind the incentives of people. Doctors give us medicine even if we are well without it. That’s what they are paid to do.
15. Minimize risk for downsides: Knowing what I should avoid is as important as knowing what I should chase (NNT).
16. Maximize risk for unbounded upsides: Know that good things happen when I keep my mind open and free. “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going because you might not get there.” — Yogi Berra.
17. Follow the Lindy: Things that have proven their fitness. In books, these are the classics (e.g., works of Aquinas, Marx, Russell, Popper, Galileo, Darwin, Imam Ali, Montaigne, etc.).
18. Go wide with specific deeps (T or V Shape). Read from multiple disciplines but go deep in some. Be encyclopedic. Learn and read from adjacent domains at the same time. And read multiple of them together. Reading Russell, Popper, Hayek, Taleb (for a 5th time), and Wittgenstein at the same time actually changed my mind.
19. Days for time off (really off—without a phone or notifications, just a pen and paper) every 2-3 months actually change my perspective.
20. I can actually read while I walk. (I don’t enjoy Audible that much since I can’t highlight. I replaced that with the Spoken Content feature on iPhone to read any iBook for me.)
21. Motion creates emotions. That’s absolutely true. I feel amazing after every run (-1 run in 2024). If I’m blocked or down, I move, and I’ll feel good. Creativity spurs in motion. My best technical or product solutions came after a 20+ min walk.
22. Spending time with loved family and close friends is a bliss.
23. Globalism as a way of thinking is for the average. Most people are being molded into a global way of thinking. This is a rut I should always fight.
Salam, peace.
